How Abraham Lincoln 
Became President 




By J. McCan Davis 

Centennial Edition 

1809 - 1909 








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COPyRlGHT DEPOSrr. 



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How 
Abraham Lincoln 
Became President 



Centennial Edition 




Ar.UAIIAM LINCOLN AS PRLSIDENT. 
From an nld steel engraving, after a photograph by Brady. 



How Abraham Lincoln 
Became President 



By J. McCAN DAVIS 

Author of " The Breaking of the Deadlock," " Abraham Lincoln : 
His Book," etc. 



Centennial Edition 



THE ILLINOIS COMPANY 

SPRINGFIELD. ILLINOIS 

1909 



LIBPARY of CONGRESS 
^ *to CoDies Recefve^ 

FEB 4 1909 

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Copyright. 1909 

by 
J. McCan Davis 



Engravings made by the Capitol Engraving Company, 
Springfield, Illinois 



Prc« of the Henry O. Shei>ard Company 






To the Soldiers of the Civil War, 

Comrades of My Father, 

the heroic men who offered their lives that 

government of the people, by the people, for the people 

shall not perish from the earth." 




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Foreword. 

Abraham Lincoln was in no sense an accident. His 
nomination for President in i860 surprised the country. 
Yet it was the logical result of a series of events that had 
extended over a period of many years. This was not 
wholly clear then, but it is plain enough now. It is the 
purpose of this little volume to tell briefly the story of 
his preparation for his colossal task and of the events 
that made him, almost inevitably, as it now seems, Chief 
Magistrate of the nation. 

There have been many great men in the world, and 
the future will bring forth more great men. But the 
world has produced only one Abraham Lincoln, and we 
may not expect another in all the generations yet unborn. 
The product of an age, he belongs to all ages. 

J. McC. D. 

Springfield, Illinois, 

October 24, 1908. 



CONTENTS. 

PACE 

Chapter I — Dreams of a Boy in the Wilderness 17 

Chapter II — Foundation of Greatness in a Frontier Village 21 

Chapter III — A Prophecy — "Might Be Governor Some Day".. 24 

Chapter IV — Quits Politics — Contentment "on the Circuit" 27 

Chapter V — The Awakening — "Back Into Politics" 31 

Chapter VI — Fame Grows — " Lincoln for Vice-President " 35 

Chapter VII — The New Issue — " A House Divided " 41 

Chapter VIII — Lincoln-Douglas Debates — Antagonists, Personal 

Friends 46 

Chapter IX — Lincoln's Question at Freeport — the Answer 50 

Chapter X — After the Debates — A Presidential Possibility 53 

Chapter XI— "What's the Use Talking of Me for President? ". . 56 
Chapter XII — Lincoln Sees "Fighting Chance" — Wants Illinois 

Delegation ^" 

Chapter XIII — Story of a Fence Rail — Convention Stampeded.. 63 
Chapter XIV — Seward Almost a Certainty — " Lincoln Looming 

Up" 73 

Chapter XV — The National Convention — Lincoln the Victor 85 

Chapter XVI — " Farewell " 93 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

Abraham Lincoln as President Frontispiece 

The Author 10 

Site of Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace 16 

The Emigration from Kentucky 20 

Grave of Lincoln's Mother 23 

Lincoln Cabin in Indiana 26 

Little Pigeon Baptist Church, Spencer County, Indiana 28 

Lincoln Home in the Sangamon Bottom, Near Decatur, 111., in 1830. 30 

New Salem 34 

An Election Return — Lincoln's First Official Document 36 

Abraham Lincoln in 1 858 40 

Stephen A. Douglas 44 

Gov. Richard J. Oglesby 62 

Oglesby and Hanks Bringing the Rails from the Sangamon Bottom.. 64 

John Hanks 66 

Lincoln Addressing Decatur Convention, 1860 68 

Gen. John M. Palmer 70 

The Chicago Wigwam 72 

" A Rail Old Western Gentleman " 76 

Great Lincoln Rally, 1860 79 

Lincoln Home, Springfield, 1860 84 

Lincoln's Departure from Springfield 86 

Lincoln's First Inauguration, 1861 88 

President Lincoln and His Cabinet 92 



A TRIBUTE. 

Abraham Lincoln was not a deity. It is among the glories 
of the human race that he was a man. He stands on a pinnacle 
alone, the greatest man in our history — the most wondrous man 
of all the ages. The world will forever marvel at his origin and 
his career. Whence came this wondrous man? Back of Lin- 
coln — generations before he was born — events happened 
which helped to shape and mold his destiny. No man escapes 
this inheritance from the past. We can not know what seeds 
were sown a thousand years ago. We can not see far beyond 
the log cabin in the wilderness of Kentucky. He came to us 
with no heritage save the heart and the brain which came from 
the fathomless deeps of the unknown. 

He was endowed with that divine gift of imagination which 
enabled him to behold the future. The emancipation proclama- 
tion loomed in his mind when, as an unknown, friendless youth, 
he stood on the levee in New Orleans and saw a slave auction 
thirty years before the Civil War. As he sat in the White 
House he saw beyond battles, beyond the end of the war, 
beyond the restoration of peace, a reunited country — the 
grandest nation on the globe, under a single and triumphant 
flag, moving down the centuries to its glorious destiny. 

— From the oration on '' Tlie Tzvo Giants of Illinois," by 
J. McCcin Davis. 



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CHAPTER I. 

THE DREAMS OF A BOY IN THE WILDERNESS. 

It is quite possible that Abraham Lincoln, a little boy 
in Kentucky, dreamed that some day he would be Presi- 
dent of the United States. Such has been the dream of 
many another American boy, inspired by the hopeful 
encouragement of a fond mother. But the chances are 
that the mind of Abraham Lincoln, the boy, did not soar 
so far away as the White House in Washington. 

When Abraham Lincoln was born (February 12, 
1809), this nation was yet very young. A great many 
things were to be demonstrated. The Declaration of 
Independence, whose author was still living, was the most 
vital thing of the time, proclaiming this the land of 
equality and opportunity. Yet not many had, as very 
many came to have in later years, the magnificent concep- 
tion of the limitless possibilities that lie before every 
American youth. 

The new republic had chosen its best and its greatest 
men to fill the high office of President. But none had 
been what the world has since come to call a '' self-made 
man." Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison — all 
had been of gentle birth, all had been respectably edu- 
cated in the way decreed by the custom of the time. 

Although it was the shibboleth of the new republic 
that " all men are created equal," it was yet to be shown 

17 



18 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

that a boy born of the humblest parentage, in poverty 
and obscurity, without educational advantages, could rise, 
by the sheer force of his own efforts, to the most exalted 
office in the land. 

Little Abraham, son of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, 
in the wilderness of Kentucky, found little in his sur- 
roundings to suggest great things. He learned in time, 
from the pioneer schoolmaster and from a few books that 
he came upon by chance, certain facts about the nation's 
history and some stories of its great men. Later, still a 
boy, but transplanted to another wilderness in another 
State, he got possession of Weems' " Life of Washing- 
ton," the most popular biographical work of that day. 
Washington, " father of his country," loomed as the 
greatest figure in American history, and young Abraham 
found in the character portrayed in this book an ideal that 
persisted to the end of his life. 

George Washington ! We can hardly suppose that 
Abraham, reading his book by the flaring light of a fire- 
place in a log cabin, had any thought that he could ever 
be as great or as world-famous as this wondrous man. 
George Washington was so exalted a character — he 
seemed to tower so high above common man — as to be 
utterly beyond the ambition, beyond the imagination, of 
this boy of the frontier. 

Yet a strange ambition very soon set the youthful 
mind aflame. It was the ambition to rise above his sordid 
environment — to " get up higher." Not many books 
were within his reach, but he read them all — and then 
read them again. Thus he acquired something that 
became a distinguishing characteristic — the gift of 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 19 

thoroughness — that was predominant throughout his 
Hfe. He learned to master every attempted task. Let 
him investigate something, he would go to the bottom ; 
he would not leave it until he knew all about it. This was 
the great secret of his self-education — the one great fact 
that transplanted the university to the fireside of a log 
cabin in a far-off wilderness. 

" The short and simple annals of the poor " is Lin- 
coln's own description of his youthful career. His birth 
in Kentucky, amid the humble surroundings common to a 
pioneer community — his single year of instruction under 
the pioneer schoolmaster — his bitter struggle with pov- 
erty, beginning at his birth and continuing into the years 
of manhood — is a story familiar to every schoolboy. As 
Lincoln emerged from boyhood, he heard of a man for 
whom he conceived a high admiration. The man was 
Henry Clay of Kentucky. He had been a member of 
Congress for many years; he had achieved fame as an 
orator, and he was rapidly becoming the idol of a large 
part of the American people. 

Henry Clay became the ideal statesman in the mind 
of Abraham Lincoln, even before he had left the rude hut 
which was the home of Thomas Lincoln and his little 
family in Indiana. The first year of young Lincoln in 
Illinois was passed in Macon county, not far from Deca- 
tur. Here he helped " clear " a small farm in the Sanga- 
mon bottom, and made the rails that were destined to 
achieve renown and to become no small factor in carrying 
Lincoln far beyond his most extravagant dreams of place 
and power. 



CHAPTER II. 

FOUNDATION OF GREATNESS LAID IN A FRONTIER VILLAGE. 

The ensuing six years were extremely important ones 
for Abraham Lincohi. They were the year (1831-1837) 
which he spent in the pioneer village of New Salem. This 
was one of the little towns that had sprung up along the 
Sangamon river and whose inhabitants had some am- 
bitious hopes with respect to the future. The atmosphere 
of New Salem was not much different from that in which 
Lincoln had passed all of his earlier years. Its inhabitants 
were pioneer men and women of rough exterior, but of 
kind, generous, honest impulses. There were not many 
counterfeits among them. They were genuine men and 
women. In this atmosphere — amid this free, unselfish 
life — here where men met upon one common level — 
here where there were no classes, no aristocracy — only 
men, whose strongest tie binding them together was the 
brotherhood of man — Abraham Lincoln completed the 
foundation of his great character and his marvelous 
career. 

It was at this crude frontier village that Lincoln's 
ambition began to expand. He had first entered the vil- 
lage early in 1831 as a flat-boat man on his way to New 
Orleans. When he returned -^ few months late- he h^id had 
his first glimpse of the world ; and in the far-off Southern 
city he had gotten his first clear notion of the enormity of 

21 



22 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

human slavery ; for he had witnessed a slave auction — 
and there were planted the seeds of the emancipation 
proclamation. " If I ever get a chance to hit that thing," 
he said, as he looked on in horror, "by the eternal, I'll 
hit it hard." 

Within a few months after settling at New Salem Lin- 
coln became a candidate for the Legislature. Then, before 
the election came around, he became a soldier in the 
Black Hawk War. His first venture in politics proved a 
failure, for he was defeated as a legislative candidate ; 
but two years later (in 1834) he sought the same office 
again, and this time was successful. Meanwhile he had 
become a store-keeper and the village postmaster. He 
took up surveying and found a great demand for his pro- 
fessional services. He read law — an ambition formed, 
no doubt, some years before, when he had read the revised 
statutes of Indiana — and was duly licensed as a lawyer. 
He was still a member of the legislature when he put his 
personal belongings in a pair of saddle-bags and rode a 
borrowed horse to Springfield, which henceforth was his 
place of residence. 

Lincoln's years at New Salem were years of progress, 
of climbing, of looking upward and onward. Gradually 
his self-confidence developed ; he found that he could do 
things — that he could inspire his neighbors with con- 
fidence in him — that, in short, there were many possibili- 
ties for him in the future. 




GRAVE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER IN i860. 
From an old engraving. 



CHAPTER III. 

AN EARLY PROPHECY — " WOULDn't BE SURPRISED IF ABE 
LINCOLN GOT TO BE GOVERNOR SOME DAY." 

Although Lincohi Hvcd precisely the life of those 
around him — joining in the rough-ar.d-tunible sports of 
the Clary's Grove boys, and being, so far as external 
appearances gave any clue, only a tall, awkward product 
of the frontier — his extraordinary ability was not with- 
out recognition on the part of his neighbors. He was 
obviously and undeniably superior to most of them in 
mental equipment. They came to him to have him write 
their deeds and their legal papers. He was frequently 
consulted on questions of law. The people were not long 
in discovering that the flat-boat man, store-keeper, post- 
master, surveyor and legislator was rapidly towering 
above them. 

No doubt Lincoln had ambitions that carried him far 
beyond the confines of New Salem. Perhaps he expected 
some day to go to Congress. He had long since made 
the discovery that Congressmen, and even United States 
Senators, were, after all, only " common clay," and that 
even these high positions were not to be considered unat- 
tainable. 

There were men in New Salem shrewd enough to 
perceive something of Lincoln's possibilities. " Often," 
testifies one of the surviving inhabitants of New Salem, 

24 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 25 

" I have heard my brother-in-law, Dr. Duncan, say he 
would not be surprised if Abe Lincoln got to be governor 
of Illinois." (Statement of Daniel Greene Burner, Berry 
and Lincoln's grocery clerk, to the author in 1895.) Yet 
Dr. Duncan was probably far ahead of the other residents 
of New Salem as a prophet respecting Lincoln ; for not 
many of them were able to perceive the attributes of a 
governor of Illinois in the tall, awkward surveyor who 
went about locating corner-stones, or the perambulating 
postmaster who went about delivering letters from the 
ample interior of his hat. 

His candor and honesty are shown clearly in his first 
appeal for public office. When he became a candidate 
for the Legislature, in 1832, he distributed a handbill 
which set forth his " platform." He concluded : 

" Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. 
Whether that be true or not, I can say, for one, that I 
have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed by 
my fellow men by rendering myself worthy of their 
esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this am- 
bition is yet to be developed. I am young and unknown 
to many of you. I was born, and have ever remained, in 
the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or 
popular relatives or friends to recommend me. My case 
is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of the 
county ; and, if elected, they will have conferred a favor 
upon me for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to 
compensate. But, if the good people in their wisdom 
shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been 
too familiar with disappointments to be very much 
chagrined." 



CHAPTER IV. 

IN CONGRESS — DISAPPOINTED — QUITS POLITICS — FINDS 
CONTENTMENT " ON THE CIRCUIT." 

Lincoln's admiration for Henry Clay carried him 
naturally into the Whig party. Although elected to the 
Legislature on local issues, he was an outspoken Whig; 
and it was as a Whig that he sought election to Congress, 
an ambition in which he was finally successful. Lincoln's 
career in Congress, covering only one term, has been fre- 
quently pronounced a " failure." And so it was, from the 
viewpoint of achievement in Congress, as well as with 
respect to popularity at home. But the fault was charge- 
able less to Lincoln than to his party. Lincoln's service 
in Congress came during the Mexican War, and the 
Whig party was on the unpopular side ; it had opposed 
the war in the belief that it was being waged in the inter- 
est of the slave power. At the end of his term the Spring- 
field district sent a new Congressman to Washington. 
Lincoln asked for a federal appointment; he wanted to 
be Commissioner of the General Land Office; but he 
failed to get the office. He was offered an appointment 
as Governor of Oregon Territory; but he declined to 
accept it, and he came home, chagrined and dejected, 
resolved to quit politics forever. 

After 1849 Lincoln's retirement from politics was 
complete. In 1850 Congress enacted the famous " com- 

27 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 29 

promise," a series of measures designed to settle the con- 
flict between the North and the South with respect to 
slavery. Thus was removed apparently the only vital 
issue that remained to divide political parties. True, 
there were a good many " issues," but they were com- 
paratively unimportant; the party organizations were 
held together mainly by those who cared everything for 
office, but much less for political principles. 

For a half dozen years Lincoln practiced his profession 
assiduously. He followed the custom of the day and on 
horseback, in company with other lawyers, traveled from 
county to county, trying cases before the judges who 
generally traveled with the lawyers. Lincoln by degrees 
became one of the leading lawyers of his time in Illinois. 
There were other lawyers whose fees were larger, but it 
may well be doubted if, in point of ability and of success 
at the bar, Lincoln had any superior among his profes- 
sional contemporaries. 

These were years of comparative contentment for Lin- 
coln. Year by year he saw his professional prestige and 
his professional income increasing. It was a most con- 
genial life, this old-fashioned " riding the circuit " ; for it 
threw him in the company of the most brilliant, accom- 
plished and agreeable men of the time. As a circuit- 
riding lawyer, Lincoln not only acquired his unrivaled 
reputation as a story-teller, but he completed his prepara- 
tion for the great things he was soon to do — for the 
great career which was now about to open, but of which 
he knew absolutely nothing. 



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CHAPTER V. 

THE AWAKENING — " BACK INTO POLITICS " — A NEW 
PARTY — LINCOLN ITS REAL LEADER. 

The year 1854 marked the reentry of Abraham Lin- 
coln into political life. It was the year of his awakening 
from the peaceful life on the circuit. Stephen A. Douglas, 
then United States Senator from Illinois — a man who 
had rapidly risen to the leadership of his party in the 
United States Senate and who was popularly regarded 
as the nation's foremost statesman — forced through Con- 
gress the measure that became known as the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill. This bill in effect repealed the Missouri 
Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in the 
unorganized territory north of 36° 30', and gave the 
people of a territory, prior to the formation of a State 
government, the right to determine for themselves 
whether or not they should have slavery. This was the 
doctrine of " popular sovereignty," thenceforward linked 
inseparably with the name of Stephen A. Douglas. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill necessarily reopened the 
slavery question, for it made it possible to form several 
slave States from the new territory in the Northwest. 
The storm of opposition which swept over the North 
aroused Lincoln. He put aside his law books and once 
more took up the discussion of political questions. Illi- 
nois became the storm center of the entire nation and 

31 



32 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

gradually a new figure emerged from the political chaos 
of the day. The strange form was the circuit-riding law- 
yer, the quaint story-teller, the skilled debater, Abraham 
Lincoln. 

The year 1854 found the old parties rapidly going to 
pieces. The Whig party in truth was already dead. Its 
last presidential campaign was that of 1852; and although 
its leaders had made the customary prophecies of victory 
the party had been badly defeated. In Illinois the Whig 
State convention of 1852 had been a most perfunctory 
affair. An interesting and significant incident was the 
adoption of resolutions on the death of Henry Clay, whose 
life went out almost coincidently with that of the party 
with which his name had been so long identified. As for 
Lincoln there is no record or recollection that he was 
present at the Whig convention of 1852; his name does 
not appear in the list of delegates ; for he was " out of 
politics." 

But the year 1854 witnessed the breaking down of the 
old party lines. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill proved a 
severe blow to the Democratic party. In Illinois many 
men who had been prominent as Democratic leaders 
deserted the party and opposed the Kansas-Nebraska 
measure. The Whigs drifted aimlessly about. Very 
soon there was talk of a new party. But two years elapsed 
before the new party actually appeared in organized form. 

In the meantime Lincoln, like many of his Whig asso- 
ciates, was a man without a party. He was slow — 
exceedingly slow — to break the old party ties. He kept 
away from a convention held in Springfield in 1854 for 
the purpose of organizing a new party — not that he was 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 33 

necessarily out of sympathy with its object, but he was 
not yet fully prepared to admit that a new political party 
was necessary. 

The events of the ensuing two years rapidly dissipated 
Lincoln's doubts as to the expediency of a new party. 
With the opening of the year 1856 Lincoln was eager to 
join in the new party movement. When a handful of 
editors met in Decatur February 22, 1856, he was there 
in consultation with them. There it was that the pre- 
liminary steps were taken for the organization of the 
Republican party of Illinois. Three months later (May 
29), the first Republican State convention was held in 
Cloomington and there Lincoln made a wonderful speech 
which swayed the convention and which infused into the 
new party that spirit which solidified and held it together 
and made it ultimately triumphant. 

From the beginning, Lincoln was the real leader of 
the Republican party in Illinois. Other men were the 
nominal leaders ; other men were chairmen of committees 
and conventions ; but the man whose influence was most 
powerful — the man whose intellect dominated the new 
party and whose ideas became its first principles — was 
Abraham Lincoln. 

By 1855 Lincoln had achieved such standing as to 
make him a formidable condidate for United States 
Senator. He needed only a few votes to elect him; but 
he, an anti-Nebraska Whig, could not get these, and he 
gave way to Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Nebraska Demo- 
crat. 




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CHAPTER VI. 

HIS FAME GROWS — " LINCOLN FOR VICE-PRESIDENT " — 
FOR PARTY HARMONY. 

By 1856 the name of Abraham Lincoln was coming to 
be known in other States. Yet he did not regard himself, 
nor did his friends regard him, as in any sense a national 
figure. The Republican national convention was held at 
Philadelphia June 17 of that year, and no one was more 
surprised than Mr. Lincoln himself when the news came 
to Illinois that he had received no votes for Vice- 
President on the ticket that v/as to be headed by John C. 
Fremont. Lincoln was attending court at Urbana, and 
when a friend read to him from a Chicago newspaper the 
announcement of the ballot for Vice-President he said 
indifferently : " I do not suppose the Lincoln referred to 
is myself." Then he added, half facetiously : " There is 
another great man of the nam.e of Lincoln in Massa- 
chusetts." 

Lincoln was intensely active in the campaign of 1856. 
It is said that he made more than fifty speeches during the 
summer and autumn. The speeches were not of the short, 
flippant, catchy variety so common in latter-day politics, 
delivered at the rate of three or four or a dozen a day, as 
in modern times. Three or four speeches a week was the 
rule, and the audiences often were composed largely 
of men who had traveled twenty miles or farther by 

35 













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ELECTION RETURN WRITTEN BY LINCOLN. 

This was Mr. Lincoln's first official document. While a resident of New 
Salem he frequently was clerk of election. 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 37 

wagon or on horseback over prairie roads. The speeches 
were long, but the people heard them through with eager- 
ness. It was no uncommon thing in that day for an audi- 
ence at a political meeting to be held by a public speaker 
spellbound for three or four hours at a time. As Lincoln 
went about the State talking against the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill and " squatter sovereignty " he added vastly to his 
reputation as a public speaker and he rapidly became the 
recognized leader of the Republican party in Illinois. 

The new Republican party lost the State of Illinois in 
the national election of 1856, for the reason that the con- 
servatives, including many Old Line Whigs, refused to 
support Fremont and voted for Fillmore; but on the 
State ticket the new party had been united and it elected 
its candidate for governor, William H. Bissell. The 
result thus showed that the Republicans were now in the 
majority in the State. The thing needed was party har- 
mony, and Lincoln set about to unite and solidify the new 
party, " Let by-gones be by-gones," said he ; " let past 
dififerences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the 
real issue let us reinaugurate the good old ' central idea ' 
of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is with 
us ; God is with us. We shall again be able, not to 
declare that ' all States are equal,' nor not that ' all citizens 
as citizens are equal,' but to renew the broader, better 
declaration, including both these and much more, that 
' all men are created equal '." 

It was apparent to the far-seeing mind of Lincoln that 
the year 1858 was to witness an epoch-making combat in 
Illinois. The second term of Stephen A. Douglas as 
United States Senator was about to expire. The " Little 



38 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

Giant " not only was a candidate for reelection, but all 
over the country he was regarded as the probable nominee 
of the Democratic party for President in i860. Twice 
(in 1852 and again in 1856), he had come near winning 
that honor, and now if the southern wing of the Demo- 
cratic party could be placated he was almost certain to be 
the presidential nominee. Douglas had risen to a most 
exalted place in public life. He was then recognized as 
the leading statesman of the country. His doctrine of 
" popular sovereignty," as enunciated in the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill of 1854, had become the leading political 
issue of the time. It had given birth to the new Repub- 
lican party, organized to combat " popular sovereignty " 
and the extension of slavery. Lincoln must have fore- 
seen that the senatorial contest of 1858 was to be a test 
of strength between the old and the new parties. It was 
a mere incident that Senator Douglas was seeking reelec- 
tion ; the real conflict was one of principle and Illinois 
was destined to be the battle-ground. Here the line of 
battle was to be marked out for the greater combat that 
was to occur two years later. 

Douglas was not without his troubles within his own 
party. He had broken with President Buchanan on the 
Lecompton question. Buchanan wanted Kansas admitted 
with the Lecompton constitution, which permitted slavery. 
Douglas declared that the Lecompton constitution had 
been fraudulently adopted, that it did not represent the 
will of the people, and that the attempt to bring Kansas 
into the Union as a slave State was an outrage and a 
flagrant violation of his " great principle of popular sover- 
eignty." When the Democratic State convention, assem- 



How Abraliam Lincoln Became President. .iO 

bled at Springfield April 21, 1858, adopted a resolution 
approving the course of Senator Douglas and declaring 
for his reelection, a number of delegates, Buchanan 
Democrats, withdrew and held a separate convention. 
But the anti-Douglas movement within the Democratic 
party was not formidable. Every member of the lower 
house of Congress from Illinois stood by him and his 
leadership of the party in Illinois was not seriously dis- 
puted. No other Democrat had the temerity to be candi- 
date for Senator against him. 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

As he appeared at the time of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in 1858. Mr. 
Lincoln aid not wear a beard until after his election to the' Presidency in 
i860. 



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CHAPTER VII. 

THE NEW ISSUE — "a HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF 
CAN NOT STAND." 

The Republican State convention was held at Spring- 
field June 1 6, 1858. For some time beforehand it was 
generally conceded that Abraham Lincoln would be 
brought forward by the convention as the party's candi- 
date for United States Senator to oppose Senator Doug- 
las. Lincoln carefully prepared a speech for the occasion. 
He was not unaware of the great responsibility that 
devolved upon him and every word to be uttered received 
the most thoughtful consideration. He was about to give 
expression to a thought that had gradually evolved in his 
mind out of the controversy of the preceding four years. 
He was to promulgate a new issue. The new doctrine 
was stated so boldly that it startled many of Lincoln's 
own followers, who declared he had made a " political 
blunder." But Lincoln had carefully weighed his words ; 
he had anticipated and was ready to answer every criti- 
cism ; and he held to the issue there proclaimed, not only 
through that memorable campaign, but until he had lived 
to see it justified by the great events that swiftly followed. 

This speech of Lincoln passed into history as the 
" house-divided " speech — a designation given it from 
the following passage: 

" ' A house divided against itself can not stand.' I 

41 



42 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

believe this Government can not endure permanently half 
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be 
dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall ; but I do 
expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one 
thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery 
will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the 
public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course 
of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it for- 
ward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States — 
old as well as new, North as well as South." 

Immediately Douglas savagely attacked the doctrine 
thus boldly proclaimed by Lincoln. He declared it was 
" sectional " and " revolutionary." " Why can not this 
Government exist divided into free and slave States?" 
thundered Douglas. " Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
Madison, Hamilton and Jay and the great men of that day 
made this Government divided into free and slave States 
and left each State perfectly free to do as it pleased on 
the subject of slavery. Why can it not exist on the same 
principles on which our fathers made it ? " 

The attack of Douglas brought the attention of the 
whole country to the " house divided " speech of Mr. 
Lincoln. Very soon every eye was turned to Illinois. 

Lincoln had given a new aspect to the slavery ques- 
tion. Up to that time every attempt at legislation affect- 
ing slavery had been based on the theory of compromise. 
There had been two famous " compromises " — the Mis- 
souri compromise of 1820 and the compromise of 1850. 
Both had been founded on the theory that the institution 
of slavery was to be protected and perpetuated. The 
opposition had been directed, not against the institution 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 43 

itself, but against the spread of slavery into the territory 
dedicated to freedom. But here was a new doctrine pro- 
claiming that the day of compromise was at an end, that 
this Government could not permanently endure half slave 
and half free, that it must become eventually all slave or 
all free. 




STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 

His Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 caused Abraham Lincoln to re-enter 
politics: and his debates with Lincoln in 1858 made the latter a national fig- 
ure and a presidential possibility. 

Senator Douglas and Mr. Lincoln were long political rivals but always 
personal friends. When Mr. Lincoln was elevated to the Presidency, Mr. 
Douglas, defeated candidate for the office, became one of his loyal supporters. 
At the inaugural ceremonies, March 4, 1861, he held the President's hat as a 
token of his sustaining friendship. At Springfield, 111., April 25, he delivered 
a speech of great eloquence and force, appealing to his followers throughout 
the nation to rally to the support of the Union, declaring that " the shortest 
way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war." 
He died in Chicago June 3, 1861. 



The "Little Giant": A Tribute 



American history furnishes no higher example of 
patriotism than the conduct of Stephen A. Douglas in 
1361. There was peculiar pathos in his death. Lin- 
coln lived a finished life; his great mission was accom- 
plished, and he passed beyond the purple hills in the 
resplendent glory of an imperishable fame. Douglas 
died in the noonday of life, his life-ambition unrealized, 
with magnificent possibilities yet unfulfilled. The Amer- 
ican people owe much to Stephen A. Douglas ; and 
if Abraham Lincoln could speak once more he would 
gladly pay his antagonist the tribute of praise that belongs 
to a great and patriotic man. 

From the oration, ^'The Tivo Giants of Illinois," 
by J. McCan Davis. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES — ANTAGONISTS ON THE 
STUMP BUT PERSONAL FRIENDS. 

As the campaign started out, Lincoln was obliged to 
be content with following Douglas and replying to him as 
opportunity offered. He found himself at a distinct dis- 
advantage ; he was obliged to talk almost entirely to 
Republican audiences, and he had to bear the charge of 
" annoying " Judge Douglas by this " unfair " procedure 
of " following him about the State." Lincoln longed for 
an opportunity to talk to those who opposed him — to the 
voters who were followers of Douglas. It was not enough 
that he bolster up the faith of his own followers and 
inspire them with enthusiasm ; what he desired most to 
do was to make converts to the new party. He reasoned 
that he could best do this by speaking with Senator Doug- 
las from the same platform and to the same audience. 
He therefore challenged Douglas to a series of joint 
debates, and Douglas accepted the challenge, with the 
result that debates were held at seven cities in the State — 
Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, 
Quincy and Alton — beginning August 21 and ending 
October 15. 

These debates at once attracted national attention. 
Douglas had many advantages. He was of " world-wide 
renown." In prestige as a statesman he was without a 

4G 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 4? 

peer. He was rated, too, as the greatest debater in the 
United States Senate. As for Lincoln it may be said that 
he was well known, but that probably one hundred other 
men in the United States could claim as great or greater 
distinction than he had yet attained. Lincoln himself felt 
keenly the disparity between himself and Douglas in point 
of reputation. In these debates, as on previous occasions, 
he expressed his admiration for his famous opponent. 
He was free to acknowledge that Douglas had reached a 
place far higher than any he himself could hope to 
attain. " His name fills the nation and is not unknown 
even in foreign lands," said Lincoln. " I affect no con- 
tempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached 
that the oppressed of my species might have shared with 
me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that emi- 
nence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a 
monarch's brow." 

In personal appearance and style of oratory, there was 
the most marked diflference between Douglas and Lincoln. 
In stature, Lincoln towered an even twelve inches above 
his rival. Douglas, in his manner of speaking, was digni- 
fied, august and forceful. He was possessed of a deep, 
sonorous voice. He spoke with great deliberation and his 
well-rounded sentences came out with tremendous impres- 
siveness. He rarely indulged in anecdotes and there were 
few attempts at humor. He was desperately in earnest. 
In majesty and convincing power of speech, Douglas has 
had few equals among American orators. 

Lincoln was the antithesis of Douglas. " He was lean 
in flesh and ungainly in figure," says W. H. Herndon, 
his law partner and biographer. " When he began speak- 



48 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

ing, his voice was shrill, piping and unpleasant. His 
manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face, wrinkled and 
dry, his oddity of pose, his diffident movements — every- 
thing seemed to be against him, but only for a short 
time. * * * As he proceeded he became somewhat 
animated. * * * His style was clear, terse and com- 
pact. ♦ * * He spoke with effectiveness and to 
move the judgment as well as the emotions of men. 
* * * In defense of the Declaration of Independence 
— his greatest inspiration — he was ' tremendous in the 
directness of his utterances; he rose to impassioned elo- 
quence, unsurpassed by Patrick Henry, Mirabeau, or 
Vergniaud, as his soul was inspired with the thought of 
human right and Divine justice.' His little gray eyes 
flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound 
thoughts ; and his uneasy movements and diffident man- 
ner sunk themselves beneath the wave of righteous indig- 
nation that came sweeping over him. Such was Lincoln 
the orator," 

The times were intensely partisan and both combat- 
ants suffered unjust attacks in the opposition newspapers. 
The Chicago Times portrayed Lincoln as an ignorant, 
illiterate fellow, who scarcely could utter a sentence with- 
out a grammatical blunder. This was the man who, a few 
years later, was to be acknowledged one of the great 
masters of the English tongue. 

But the personal relations between Douglas and Lin- 
coln were most cordial throughout the debates, as they 
always had been. On the stump Douglas frequently 
assumed a belligerent attitude ; but this was merely a part 
of the forensic combat. " My second reason for not hav- 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 49 

ing a personal encounter with the Judge," said Lincoln on 
one occasion, " is that I do not believe he wants it him- 
self. [Laughter.] He and I are about the best friends in 
the world and when we get together he would no more 
think of fighting me than of fighting his wife." At Free- 
port it is related that " presently Lincoln and Douglas 
came out on the balcony of the hotel (the Brewster 
House). They stepped out arm in arm and the crowd 
cheered and cheered. Neither Lincoln nor Douglas 
attempted to say anything. They just stood there for a 
minute bowing again and again to the crowd and every 
time they bowed a bigger shout went up." 

A survivor of the Ouincy debate relates the following 
personal experience : " I was a boy when Lincoln and 
Douglas debated in Quincy. After the speeches were 
over men crowded to the platform and some of us boys 
thought there was going to be a fight. We stood around 
awhile ; some men were shaking hands with Lincoln and 
others with Douglas. Pretty soon Douglas grabbed Lin- 
coln by the arm and said, 'Come on, Abe ; let's go to the 
hotel,' and they walked off together. That ended the 
prospect of a fight and we boys went away somewhat dis- 
appointed." (Statement of Captain Samuel H. Bradley, 
of Mendon, Illinois, to the author.) 



CHAPTER IX. 
Lincoln's question at freeport and douglas' answer. 

The feature of the Lincoln-Douglas debates about 
which most has been written was the passage at Freeport, 
in the second debate, in which Lincoln propounded the 
question that brought forth from Douglas the reply that 
sought to reconcile the Dred Scott decision with his 
doctrine of " popular sovereignty." Lincoln's question 
was: 

" Can the people of a United States territory, in any 
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United 
States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the forma- 
tion of a State constitution ? " 

Douglas replied as follows : " I answer emphatically, 
as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times 
from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people 
of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from 
their limits prior to the formation of a State constitution. 
[Enthusiastic applause.] Mr. Lincoln knew that I had 
answered that question over and over again. He heard 
me argue the Nebraska Bill on that principle all over the 
State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse 
for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that 
question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court 
may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether 
slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the 

50 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 51 

Constitution, the people have the lawful means to intro- 
duce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that 
slavery can not exist an hour or a day anywhere, unless 
it is supported by local police regulations. ['Right, 
right.'] Those police regulations can only be established 
by the local Legislature ; and if the people are opposed to 
slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who 
will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the intro- 
duction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they 
are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. 
Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court 
may be on that abstract question, still the right of the 
people to make a slave territory or a free territory is 
perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill. I hope 
Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that 
point." 

It is said that prior to the Fxeeport debate Lincoln 
had told some of his friends — men who were recognized 
leaders of the new Republican party — of his purpose to 
ask this question, and that they had unanimously advised 
against it, on the ground that Douglas' answer was cer- 
tain to give him a distinct advantage ; that Lincoln had 
persistently ignored this argument and had declared that 
he proposed to drive Douglas " into a corner," giving him 
the alternative of two answers — one that would defeat 
him for the Senate, the other that, while it probably would 
reelect him to the Senate, would alienate the Southern 
Democrats and thus defeat him for the presidency two 
years later. 

The truth is that in his reply to Lincoln's celebrated 
question, Douglas said nothing that was not already quite 



52 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

well understood. Almost the identical statement had been 
made in his speech at Bloomington six weeks before the 
Freeport debate. Lincoln heard the Bloomington speech 
(he occupied a seat on the platform) , and of course under- 
stood Douglas' position perfectly. 

But Lincoln's question at Freeport was important, 
because it brought fresh attention to the point he sought 
to make, namely, that " popular sovereignty," which gave 
the people of a territory the right to have slavery or not 
to have it, and the Dred Scott decision, which held that 
the slave owner might take his " property " into any terri- 
tory, were irreconcilable. The reply of Douglas at Free- 
port augmented his breach with the South, but it was in 
no sense the cause of the breach, as many writers have 
erroneously assumed. Douglas had broken with the 
South the year before over the Lecompton question. 
Southern Democratic leaders already regarded him with 
suspicion and disfavor. 



CHAPTER X. 

AFTER THE DEBATES — LINCOLN BECOMES A PRESIDENTL'VL 
POSSIBILITY. 

Douglas came out of the contest of 1858 the victor, so 
far as immediate results were concerned; for he was 
reelected to the Senate. On the popular vote the Repub- 
licans had carried the State, but the Democrats still con- 
trolled the Legislature. Lincoln accepted his defeat good- 
naturedly and philosophically. 

Douglas now loomed larger than ever on the political 
horizon. The New York Herald (having in mind, of 
course, the opposition of President Buchanan), declared 
the election of Douglas " one of the most wonderful per- 
sonal victories ever achieved by a public man." The 
New York Evening Post said : " We may expect to see a 
Douglas party immediately formed in all the States, with 
its avowed champions and its recognized presses." " It 
was manifest," said the New York Tribune of November 
9, " that his triumph would render inevitable his nomina- 
tion for President at Charleston in i860. He must either 
be nominated or the Democratic party practically retires 
from the contest, surrendering the Government to the 
Republicans." The Boston Daily Advertiser of Novem- 
ber 6 said : " We think it may now be regarded as 
settled that the Democratic party will be thoroughly 
reorganized upon the Douglas-Forney basis in anticipa- 

53 



54 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

tion of the presidential campaign of i860. * * * The 
South must understand perfectly well from the recent 
results in Pennsylvania and Illinois that its only hope of 
preventing an overwhelming victory of the Republicans 
in i860 lies in adopting the Douglas creed. Some of the 
Southern leaders of the party have already hastened to 
do this." 

But if the outcome was gratifying to Douglas, it was 
far more important to Lincoln, although its effect upon 
his political fortunes and upon the political events soon to 
follow was not then perfectly clear. Prior to his debates 
with Douglas nobody had thought of Lincoln in connec- 
tion with the presidency. Back in June, just before he 
made his " house divided " speech, a vote on presidential 
candidates was taken on board a train crowded with dele- 
gates to the Republican State convention. Every man 
who had been mentioned for the presidency received a 
few votes. Lyman Trumbull, then in the Senate, was 
given seven votes, and Governor Bissell two votes. But 
not a vote was cast for Abraham Lincoln. 

But now the debates with Douglas had made Lincoln 
a national figure, and already there were suggestions that 
he was the logical candidate of the Republican party for 
President in i860. It is significant that at Mansfield, 
Ohio, on the night of November 5, three days after the 
election, a mass meeting was held and resolutions were 
adopted favoring Lincoln's nomination for President. 

The New York Herald, early in November, an- 
nounced : " The following ticket has been offered at Cin- 
cinnati : For President, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois; for 
Vice-President, John P. Kennedy of Maryland — with a 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 55 

platform embracing protection to American industry, the 
improvement of the western rivers and harbors, and oppo- 
sition to the extension of slavery by free emigration into 
the territories." The Peoria Daily Message said : " Defeat 
works wonders with some men. It has made a hero of 
Abraham Lincoln. Two or three Republican journals of 
different sections of the Union are beginning to talk of 
him as a candidate for Vice-President, with Seward for 
President ; and a Republican meeting held at Mansfield, 
Ohio, raises him a notch higher by announcing him their 
candidate for President." " He entered upon the canvass 
with a reputation confined to his own State," said the 
Chicago Press and Tribune. " He closes it with his 
name a household word wherever the principles he holds 
are honored and with the respect of his opponents in all 
sections of the country." " No man of this generation 
has grown more rapidly before the country than Lincoln 
in this canvass," said the Lowell (Mass.) Journal and 
Courier. The Illinois State Register, published at Spring- 
field, recognized as the organ of Senator Douglas, said 
December i : "If the Republican journals are to be taken 
as an index, Mr. Lincoln is to be made a presidential 
candidate upon the creed which he enunciated here in his 
June convention speech," 



CHAPTER XI. 

"what's the use of talking of me for president?" 
says lincoln. 

Thus Abraham Lincoln, in the space of a few months, 
had risen to presidential stature. Out of the West had 
come a new star in the political firmament. Lincoln for 
President! The words must have had an enchanting 
sound to this man of trials and struggles and disappoint- 
ments. Yet he gave no sign of elation. He offered no 
encouragement to the President-makers. 

While the debates were in progress Jesse W. Fell of 
Bloomington, then a prominent and active Republican 
and a personal friend of Lincoln, had occasion to travel 
through the East, and he came home impressed with the 
favorable things being said about Lincoln in the Eastern 
States. One evening in Bloomington he told Lincoln of 
the reputation he was getting in other States and sug- 
gested that he would make a formidable candidate for 
President. 

" What's the use of talking of me for President," 
replied Lincoln, " while we have such men as Seward, 
Chase and others, who are so much better known to the 
people, and whose names are so intimately associated with 
the principles of the Republican party? * * * I 
admit that I am ambitious and would like to be President. 
I am not insensible to the compliment you pay me and the 

56 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 57 

interest you manifest in the matter ; but there is no such 
good luck in store for me as the presidency of these 
United States." And in response to Mr. Fell's request for 
a biographical sketch that he might publish in the East, 
Lincoln said : " There is nothing in my early history that 
would interest you or anybody else ; and, as Judge Davis 
says, ' it won't pay.' Good night." And thus Lincoln 
sought to dismiss the subject. 

After the debates with Douglas, Lincoln went back to 
his law office. The country was too busy sounding the 
praises of the " big " men — the men who were on the 
national stage in Washington and elsewhere — to give 
much thought to Lincoln. For there were several men 
who were energetically at work to capture the presiden- 
tial nomination in i860 and who managed to keep in the 
limelight. Lincoln was not among the number. 

A wave of Lincoln sentiment, as we have seen, swept 
over the country immediately following the debate with 
Douglas, but to all appearances it had subsided. The 
country v^/as not clamoring for Lincoln. But the events 
of the ensuing year all conspired to make him the 
inevitable nominee of his party for President. We may 
guess that Lincoln continued thinking deeply, as little as 
he talked, and that he was not unaware that the trend of 
events made him more and more the logical presidential 
candidate of the Republican party. But the country did 
not so view the situation — not yet. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LINCOLN DECIDES THAT HE HAS A "FIGHTING CHANCE," 
AND STARTS IN TO GET ILLINOIS DELEGATION. 

The talk of Lincoln for President went on quietly in 
Illinois. The Republican party in the State had among 
its leaders some very able men and astute politicians. 
Judge David Davis, Judge Stephen T. Logan, John M. 
Palmer, Richard J. Oglesby, Leonard Swett, O. H. 
Browning, Jesse W. Fell — all were politicians of the 
highest rank, and all were enthusiastically for the nomina- 
tion of Lincoln for President. 

Lincoln, all through the year 1859, gave his friends 
little encouragement. " I must in all candor say I do not 
think myself fit for the presidency," he wrote in April of 
that year. 

It was not until late in the year that Lincoln seems 
to have considered himself seriously a presidential can- 
didate. Early in i860 he apparently had decided that 
he had at least a fighting chance, and that the thing of 
first importance was to make sure of the Illinois delega- 
tion. 

For there was grave danger that the delegation to the 
national convention from Lincoln's own State would be 
divided. Lincoln was a mere chance — only a " pros- 
pect." Many politicians in the State, anxious to " land 

58 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 59 

with the winner," did not take kindly to the Lincoln can- 
didacy. 

The presidential candidate who towered above all 
others was William H. Seward of New York. He had 
been governor of New York, the greatest State in the 
Union; he had almost completed a second term in the 
United States Senate; he had been conspicuous in the 
compromise legislation of 1850; he had fought the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854 ; he had become the expo- 
nent of the " higher law," and, discussing the Dred Scott 
Decision in 1858, he had announced the " irrepressible 
conflict." The whole country knew Seward; he was a 
master politician, and he had an organization that ex- 
tended to every State that was to be represented at Chi- 
cago; and all in all he seemed the logical and inevitable 
nominee of his party for President. 

In Illinois, Seward was making an organized effort to 
get at least a part of the State delegation. The work was 
being done quietly, but effectively. It was Seward's game 
to split up the Illinois delegation, so that Lincoln would 
appear weak in his home State. Lincoln knew well what 
was going on, and he appreciated fully the importance of 
checking the Seward movement and of preventing a divi- 
sion of the State delegation. Out in Kansas a friend, who 
seemed to be in a position to speak authoritatively, had 
promised Lincoln the delegation from that State; but, to 
Lincoln's chagrin, the convention instructed the delega- 
tion for Seward. 

The Seward movement made considerable headway in 
the north end of the State, where many county conven- 
tions either refrained from indorsing Lincoln or openly 



60 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

eulogized Seward. In the south end of the State the 
Seward people were adroitly encouraging the candidacy 
of Edward Bates of Missouri. On February 9, i860, 
Lincoln wrote Norman B. Judd a letter, in which he said : 

I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me not 
to be nominated on the national ticket, but I am where it would 
hurt some for me not to get the Illinois delegates. What I 
expected when I wrote the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now 
happening. Your discomfited assailants are most bitter against 
me, and they will, for revenge upon me, lay to the Bates egg in 
the South, and to the Seward egg in the North, and go far toward 
squeezing me out in the middle with nothing. Can you not help 
me a little in this matter in your end of the vineyard? 

Lincoln looked forward to the State convention with 

many misgivings. The convention was to be held at 

Decatur May 9. The " Seward eggs " promised to hatch 

an unpleasantly large brood of delegates. But some 

things were happening of which even Lincoln was not 

advised — things not very big in themselves, but destined 

to be tremendously important in ultimate results. 



• 




(;()\. KIC IIAKI) .1. OCLKSin. 

(I'rum a i>:iiiitinK in tlic CovL-rnor's Office, State House, Springtielil, 111.) 

It was " Dick " Oglesby, then a Decatur lawyer, who planned and 
directed the " rail episode " in the State convention in i860, which stampeded 
the eoiiventiiin for Lincoln. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

STORY OF A FENCE RAIL — HOW " DICK " OGLESBY AND 
JOHN HANKS STAMPEDED THE STATE CONVENTION, 

There lived in Decatur in i860 a brilliant young law- 
yer and politician of the name of Richard J. Oglesby. 
" Dick " Oglesby had made the acquaintance of Lincoln 
when a mere boy ; he had been an ardent admirer of Lin- 
coln for twenty years ; he believed in Lincoln and was 
for him for President with all that vehement, rugged en- 
thusiasm that distinguished the Oglesby of after years. 

" Dick " Oglesby was astute, far-seeing ; he had 
imagination, and Lincoln's magnificent possibilities as a 
popular candidate for President loomed large in his mind. 
He was acquainted with Lincoln's early life, his lowly 
origin, his rise from poverty. He knew that out on the 
Sangamon bottom, thirty years before, Lincoln, with the 
aid of John Hanks, had split rails and built a fence. 

Gov. Oglesby, a few months before his death in 1899, 
related to the writer the story of his strategy to " kill the 
Seward boom and commit the State unreservedly and 
unitedly to Lincoln." Oglesby, like Lincoln, foresaw the 
danger of a divided delegation, and he proposed to do 
something that would make the delegation solidly and 
enthusiastically for Lincoln. 

" I had known John Hanks all my life," said Gover- 
nor Oglesby to the writer. " He was a Democrat, but a 

63 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 65 

great friend of Lincoln. Years before they had gone 
together on a flatboating expedition down the Mississippi. 
He had wanted to vote for Lincoln for United States 
Senator, but he could not do this without voting for the 
local Republican candidates for the Legislature. As 
soon as he heard that Lincoln might be nominated for 
President, he was bound to vote for ' old Abe.' 

" One day I was talking with John about Abe, and 
he said that in 1830 they made a clearing twelve miles 
west of Decatur. There was a patch of timber — fifteen 
or twenty acres — and they had cleared it ; they had 
built a cabin, cut the trees, mauled rails, and put up a 
fence. 

" 'John,' said I, ' did you split rails down there with 
old Abe?' 

" ' Yes ; every day,' he replied. 

" * Do you suppose you could find any of them now ? ' 

" ' Yes,' he said. ' The last time I was down there, 
ten years ago, there were plenty of them left.' 

" ' What are you going to do to-morrow ? ' 

" ' Nothing.' 

" ' Then,' said I, ' come around and get in my buggy, 
and we will drive down there.' 

" So the next day we drove out to the old clearing. 
We turned in by the timber, and John said : 

" ' Dick, if I don't find any black-walnut rails, nor any 
honey-locust rails, I won't claim it's the fence Abe and I 
built.' 

" Presently John said, ' There's the fence ! ' 

" * But look at these great trees,' said I. 

" ' Certainly,' he answered. ' They have all grown 
up since.' 




JOHN HANKS. 

Cousin of Abraham Lincoln. Hanks lielped Lincoln make three thousand 
rails in the Sanijamon bottom in 1830. It was he who carried the " rail ban- 
ner " into the Republican State Convention at Decatur, May 10, i860. 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President, 67 

" John got out. I stayed in the buggy. John kneeled 
down and commenced chipping the rails of the old fence 
with his knife. Soon he came back with black- walnut 
shavings and honey-locust shavings. 

" ' There they are ! ' said he, triumphantly, holding 
out the shavings. ' They are the identical rails we made.' 

" Then I got out and made an examination of the 
fence. There were many black-walnut and honey-locust 
rails. 

" ' John,' said I, ' where did you cut these rails ? ' 

" ' I can take you to the stumps,' he answered. 

" ' We will go down there,' said I. 

" We drove about a hundred yards. 

" ' Now,' said he, ' look ! There's a black-walnut 
stump; there's another — another — another. Here's 
where we cut the trees down and split the rails. Then 
we got a horse and wagon, and hauled them in, and built 
the fence, and also the cabin.' 

" We took two of the rails and tied them under the 
hind axle-tree of my new buggy, and started for town. 
People would occasionally pass, and think something had 
broken. We let them think so, for we didn't wish to tell 
anybody just what we were doing. We kept right on 
until we got to my barn. There we hid the rails until 
the day of the convention. 

" Before the convention met I talked with several 
Republicans about my plan, and we fixed it up that old 
John Hanks should take the rails into the convention. 
We made a banner, attached to a board across the top 
of the rails, with the inscription : 




O -5 

8| 
I- 

U E 

rr, E 






m 

ui ^ 

oa be 

Q .5 
Q 






— o " 



O E 

U o _, . 



J-z: 



eg 

E« 

c ►- 
*>_ 
O CO 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 69 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

The Rail Candidate for President in i860. 

Two rails from a lot of 3,000 made in 1830 by John Hanks and 

Abe Lincoln, whose father was the first pioneer 

of Macon county. 

" After the convention got under way, I arose and 
announced that an old Democrat desired to make a con- 
tribution to the convention. The proceedings stopped, 
and all was expectancy and excitement. Then in walked 
old John with the rails. Lincoln was there in a corner, 
trying to escape observation. 

"'How are you, Abe?' said John, familiarly, as he 
passed. 

" ' How are you, John ? ' Lincoln answered with equal 
familiarity. 

" Then the convention cheered and cheered. There 
were loud and persistent calls for a speech from Lincoln. 
Abe had not known that the rails were to be brought in. 
He hardly knew what to say about them. 

" * Gentlemen,' he finally said, ' John and I did make 
some rails down there ; and if these aren't the identical 
rails we made, they certainly look very much like them.' 

" From that time forward the rail was ever present 
in the campaign. There was a great demand for Lin- 
coln rails. John Hanks sold the two that he brought 
into the convention. A man from Kentucky gave him 
five dollars for one. The next day he went out and got 
a wagon-load, and put them in my barn. He sold them 
for a dollar apiece. Then other people went into the 
business, and the supply seemed inexhaustible." 

" By this time," says Lamon, one of Lincoln's biog- 



/Ml 







GENERAL JOHN M. PALMER. 

Who introduced and eloquently advocated the resolution in the Decatur 
Convention, May lo^ :86o, instructing the Illinois delegation for Lincoln. 
General Palmer presided over the first Republican State Convention in Illi- 
nois, held at Bloomington, May 29, 1856. 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 71 

raphers, writing of the rail episode in the Decatur con- 
vention, " the innocent Egyptians began to open their 
eyes — they saw plainly enough now the admirable 
presidential scheme unfolded to their view." 

The Seward boom was dead. " Dick " Oglesby and 
old John Hanks and two fence rails had killed it. John 
M. Palmer was at once on his feet with a resolution 
declaring that " Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of 
the Republican party of Illinois for the presidency," and 
instructing " the delegates to the Chicago convention to 
use all honorable means to secure his nomination and to 
cast the vote of the State as a unit for him." 

Thomas J. Turner, of Freeport, who had served in 
Congress with Lincoln in 1847-8, was there as a cham- 
pion of Seward, and he bitterly attacked the resolution. 
Palmer replied in a speech of tremendous force, and 
the resolution was adopted amid great enthusiasm. 

Thus vanished the specter of a " divided delegation " 
which had haunted Lincoln for many months. It turned 
out, as Nicolay and Hay remark in their biography, 
" that the Illinois Republicans sent a delegation to the 
Chicago convention full of personal devotion to Lincoln 
and composed of men of the highest standing and of 
consummate political ability, and their enthusiastic efforts 
in his behalf among the delegations from other States 
contributed largely to the final result." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ON THE EVE OF THE NATIONAL CONVENTION — SEWARD 
ALMOST A CERTAINTY, BUT "aBE LINCOLN LOOMING 
UP." 

The Decatur convention which thus committed IIH- 
nois to Lincoln was held only a week before the national 
convention was to open in Chicago. It is a remarkable 
fact that up to that time the Lincoln candidacy had been 
almost entirely ignored by the newspapers of the East. 
Within a few days the New York Tribune, the New York 
Herald, and the New York Independent had discussed 
presidential candidates. They had spoken of Seward, 
Banks, Chase, Cameron, Bates, McLean, Sumner, Fes- 
senden. Bell, Wade, Fremont, and others ; but strangely 
enough there was not a single mention of Lincoln even 
as a possibility. 

Such was the situation only a few days before the 
Republican national convention opened at Chicago on 
the sixteenth of May, i860. The astute Illinoisans had 
secured an important advantage (not then apparent 
to the opposition), when the national convention was 
brought to Chicago. As the delegates from far-off 
States began gathering, the Lincoln boom rapidly took 
formidable shape. On May 14 (Monday), two days 
before the convention opened, the New York Herald, in 
a dispatch from Chicago, declared that the contest had 
narrowed down to Seward, Lincoln and Wade. The 

73 



74 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

Boston Herald of the same day said : "Abe Lincoln is 
looming up to-night as a compromise candidate and his 
friends are in high spirits." 

The Illinoisans, headed by Judge David Davis, worked 
adroitly and indefatigably. Lincoln sentiment spread 
with amazing rapidity among the delegates ; but it was 
something of an undercurrent. 

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, 
then the most influential paper in the country, was there 
with the proxy of a delegate from Oregon. He was not 
in sympathy with the Seward movement, but was for 
Judge Bates, of Missouri. But throughout the prelimi- 
nary skirmishing and almost up to the moment of the 
opening ballot, Greeley, astute observer that he was, 
could see little chance to prevent Seward's nomination. 

The convention was to convene on Wednesday, the 
1 6th. On Saturday, the 12th, the Chicago correspondent 
wired the Tribune — and this represented Greeley's judg- 
ment, if the message was not actually written by him : 

" Mr. Seward will lead, Mr. Bates will come next, 
Mr. Chase will be third, having some New England 
votes. Mr. Cameron will come next, and then Mr. 
Lincoln. The latter is being pressed by the Illinois dele- 
gations as a compromise candidate and would be accepted 
by all the Northwest cheerfully." 

On Tuesday night the Chicago correspondent wired 
the Tribune that " Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois, is rising in 
prominence." At 10 o'clock the same night the corre- 
spondent wired : 

" Dudley Field, of New York, and his friends have 
joined the party of Judge Bates, and efforts are making 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 75 

to concentrate the opposition to Mr. Seward upon him, 
Mr. Lincoln, however, seems to be gaining ground, and 
his IlHnois friends are greatly encouraged to-night at the 
prospect of his uniting the doubtful States and the 
Northwest." 

The convention was to open on the following day. 
The Illinoisans had been working with great energy and 
skill, and the Lincoln " boom " had grown rapidly, but 
victory was not yet in sight. The Seward managers 
hoped even yet, after the initial ballot, to get some of the 
Illinois delegates away from Lincoln. Although the 
Illinois delegation was under iron-clad instructions for 
Lincoln, and although under the leadership of ardent Lin- 
coln men, eight of the twenty-one delegates were rated 
as lukewarm; they could not see that Lincoln had more 
than a " fighting chance," and they were suspected of 
being ready to go over to Seward. To add to the embar- 
rassment of this situation, " Long John " Wentworth, 
editor of the Chicago Democrat, although after the 
Lincoln-Douglas debates he had declared that Lincoln 
should be urged on the next national convention as the 
candidate of Illinois for President, was now in the hotel 
lobbies talking openly and loudly for Seward. Finally 
the Lincoln managers detailed a man to follow Went- 
worth and denounce him, and thus counteract his influ- 
ence. 

The Illinoisans had taken a long stride forward 
when on Monday, after a three days' struggle, they won 
over to Lincoln the entire delegation from Indiana. 
They labored persistently and unceasingly with other 
States. They impressed into service every man who 




" A RAIL OLD WKSTKRN GENTLEMAN." 

A caricature of the campaign of i860. From the Oldroyd collection, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 77 

knew Lincoln to go out and talk about him — to tell of 
his romantic life, his humble birth, his rail-splitting and 
flat-boating, his fine character and his great ability. For 
the delegates were looking for an " available " candidate 
— for the man who could be elected. The principal 
objection to Seward was that he could not carry the 
doubtful States. 

One of the things the Illinoisans had to combat was 
the movement to nominate Lincoln for Vice-President. 
General John M. Palmer, who was one of the most tire- 
less workers for Lincoln, in a statement to the author in 
1896, said : 

" The Seward men were perfectly willing that he 
should go on the tail of the ticket. We were not troubled 
so much by their antagonism as by the overtures they 
were constantly making to us. They literally over- 
whelmed us with kindness. Judge David Davis came 
to me in the Tremont House, greatly agitated at the 
way things were going. He said : ' Palmer, you must 
go with me at once to see the New Jersey delegation.' 
I asked him what I could do. ' Well,' said he, * there 
is Judge Blank (naming a prominent delegate from that 
State), a grave and venerable judge, who is insisting that 
Lincoln shall be nominated for Vice-President — and 
Seward for President. We must convince the judge of 
his mistake.' 

" We went. I was introduced to Judge Blank and we 
talked about the matter for some time. Judge Blank 
praised Seward, but he was especially effusive in express- 
ing his admiration for Lincoln. He thought that Seward 
was clearly entitled to first place, and that Lincoln's 
eminent merits entitled him to second place. 



78 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

" I listened for some time and then said : ' Judge 
Blank, you may nominate Mr. Lincoln for Vice-President, 
if you please; but I want you to understand that there 
are forty thousand Democrats in Illinois who will support 
this ticket if you will give them an opportunity ; but we 
are not Whigs, and we never expect to be Whigs. We 
will never consent to support two old Whigs on this 
ticket. We are willing to vote for Mr. Lincoln with a 
Democrat on the ticket ; but we will not consent to vote 
for two old Whigs.' 

" The indignation of Judge Blank I have seldom seen 
equalled. Turning to Judge Davis he said fiercely : 

" ' Judge Davis, is it possible that party spirit so pre- 
vails in Illinois that Judge Palmer properly represents 
public opinion? ' 

" ' Oh,' said Davis, affecting some distress at what I 
had said, ' Oh, my God, Judge, you can't account for the 
conduct of these old Locofocos. Will they do as Palmer 
says? Certainly. There are forty thousand of them, 
and, as Palmer says, not ad — d one of them will vote 
for two Whigs.' 

" We left Judge Blank in a towering rage. When 
we were back at the Tremont House I said : ' Davis, you 
are an infernal rascal to sit there and hear that man 
berate me as he did. You really seemed to encourage 
him.' 

" Judge Davis said nothing, but chuckled as if he 
greatly enjoyed the joke. This incident is illustrative of 
the kind of work we had to do. We were compelled to 
resort to this argument — that the old Democrats now 
ready to affiliate with the Republican party would not 



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A i'i>li(ic8l Karth-jiiab- ' 

THE PRAIRIES ON FIRE 
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GREAT LINCOLN RALLY — SPRINGFIELD, AUGUST 8, i860. 
Reproduced from the Daily State Journal of August 9, i860. This was 
the greatest rally of the campaign. Mr. Lincoln was present and spoke 
°'''^..^A 1^ °"'y campaign speech of that year. The newspaper account says- 
At the conclusion of these remarks, Mr. Lincoln descended from the 
platform and with difficulty made his way through the vast throng who 
eagerly pressed around to take him by the hand. By an adroit movement 
he escaped on horseback, while the crowd were besieging the carriage to 
which It was expected he would return." 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 81 

tolerate two Whigs on the ticket — in order to break up 
the movement to nominate Lincoln for Vice-President." 
One part of the game of the Lincoln men was a fight 
for time. Their candidate was gaining, and the longer 
the nomination was deferred the better his chances. It 
had been the purpose to name the candidate for President 
on Thursday, the 17th. Had that been done, Mr. Seward 
probably would have been nominated. But the Illinoisans 
shrewdly maneuvered for an adjournment — and got it. 
During all Thursday night the Illinoisans worked 
desperately. Most of them did not go to bed at all. The 
supporters of other candidates also were busy. The 
problem was how to unite the opposition to Seward on an 
available candidate. 

At midnight Thursday night the New York Tribune 
correspondent wired his paper: 

"Though there is an increased disposition to gather 
about Mr. Lincoln, no effective combination of opposi- 
tion is yet formed. Ohio is uncertain, Pennsylvania gives 
no positive assurances, and when New Jersey breaks but 
half goes to Mr. Seward. Part of the Missouri delega- 
tion prefer Mr. Seward to Mr. Lincoln. 

"They want a conservative with whom to make a 
winning fight, or a straight-out radical for a contest of 
pure principle. 

"New England is anxious and doubtful. She is 
puzzled. She hesitates both to desert Mr. Seward and to 
force him on the doubtful States. They are likely to be 
much cut up. The Massachusetts delegation have been 
in a labored conference against and show an increased 
disposition to leave Mr. Seward and go for Mr. Lincoln." 



82 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

At the same hour (midnight) Horace Greeley per- 
sonally wired the Tribune: 

" My conclusion, from all that I can gather to-night, 
is that the opposition to Governor Seward can not con- 
centrate on any candidate and that he will be nominated." 

When the convention on Friday began its third day's 
session, the Seward men were still confident. They 
seemed to regard Seward's nomination as a foregone 
conclusion, and were now casting about for a satisfac- 
tory running mate. 







w E « 

2 l£ 



due 



CHAPTER XV. 

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CONVENTION — LINCOLN THE 

VICTOR. 

The convention was held in the old " Wigwam," a 
building erected for the occasion at the corner of Market 
and Lake streets. Eleven thousand persons packed the 
Wigwam. On the floor of the convention were some of 
the most distinguished men of the nation. In the galler- 
ies, hundreds of women, " gay in the high-peaked, flower- 
filled bonnets and bright shawls and plaids of the day," 
added to the brilliancy of the scene. Outside, surging in 
the streets, were from twenty to thirty thousand persons, 
eagerly awaiting some word of the proceedings within, 
shouted down by sentinels from the top of the building. 

There were no nominating speeches — only the formal 
presentation of candidates' names. Norman B. Judd, in 
presenting Lincoln's name, said : 

" Mr. President, I beg leave to offer as a candidate 
before this convention for President of the United States 
the name of Abraham Lincoln of Illinois." 

That was all. No fulsome eulogy, no long-winded 
speech. The time for action had arrived. 

There was a demonstration as each candidate was 
placed in nomination. The Seward men set up a deafen- 
ing shout, so loud and long that it momentarily discon- 

85 




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How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 87 

certed the Lincoln men. But they quickly recovered, and 
when Indiana seconded Lincoln's nomination pandemo- 
nium broke loose. It was evident that an overwhelming 
majority of the crowd in the galleries was for " Old Abe." 
" No language can describe it," wrote Leonard Swett, 
describing the scene. "A thousand steam whistles, a 
tribe of Comanches, headed by a choice vanguard from 
pandemonium, might have mingled in the scene unno- 
ticed." 

The balloting proceeded rapidly. The first ballot 
resulted: Seward, I73>^ ; Lincoln, 102; Cameron, 
50^4 ; Chase, 49; Bates, 48; Dayton, 14; McLean, 12; 
Collamer, 10 ; scattering, 6. 

There being no choice, the second ballot was pro- 
ceeded with, after Simon Cameron's name had been with- 
drawn. This ballot resulted : Seward, 184^4 ; Lincoln, 
181; Chase, 42^; Bates, 35 ; Dayton, 10; McLean, 8; 
scattering, 4. 

The third ballot proceeded amid breathless silence. 
As the last State was called, Lincoln had 230^^ votes, 
or within i^^ votes of the number necessary to nominate 
him. Before the result was announced Mr. Carter, of 
Ohio, arose and corrected the vote of that State, giving 
Lincoln four more votes, or 2^2 more than the required 
number. 

Lincoln was nominated, and now followed a wild 
struggle to " get into the band-wagon." State after 
State changed its vote to Lincoln. As finally announced 
the third ballot stood: Lincoln, 354; Seward, iio>^. 

The men on the roof bellowed down to the people in 
the streets that Lincoln was nominated. " The first roar 




7 '- ": -.-'.K,>i;:r4 



'!:'.i!'i;i:!i:! 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 89 

of cannon," says the New York Tribune's account, " soon 
mingled itself with the cheers of the people, and the same 
moment a man appeared in the hall bringing a large 
painting of Mr. Lincoln. * * * Two cannons sent 
forth roar after roar in quick succession. Delegates tore 
up the stakes and boards bearing the names of the sev- 
eral States and waved them aloft over their heads, and 
the vast multitude before the platform were waving hats 
and handkerchiefs." 

It was alleged afterward that the Lincoln managers, 
having charge of admissions, had packed the galleries 
with shouters for " Old Abe." " I do not believe the 
convention was unfairly ' packed ' in Lincoln's interest," 
says Senator Shelby M. Cullom, who was present. 
" True, Lincoln's friends had charge of the Wigwam, 
and I have no doubt that the tickets of admission were 
judiciously distributed by them, and Lincoln had the gal- 
leries with him. That was inevitable, owing to the loca- 
tion of the convention in Chicago. But the cheering for 
Lincoln was not the result of any prearranged plan ; it 
was spontaneous ; it was infectious, too, and it captured 
the convention." (Statement of Senator Cullom to the 
author.) 

While the national convention was in progress. Mr. 
Lincoln remained in Springfield and without apparent 
excitement or anxiety awaited the news from Chicago. 
Once or twice he joined in a game of " hand ball," then 
the favorite pastime of the professional men of the town. 
On Friday morning (the day of the nomination), he 
called at the office of James C. Conkling, a prominent 
lawyer, threw himself upon a lounge and remarked 



90 How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 

rather wearily : " Well, Jim, I guess I'll go back to prac- 
ticing law." Mr. Conkling had just returned from Chi- 
cago, and Mr. Lincoln was anxious to know what he 
thought of the outlook. 

" I told him the tendency was to drop Seward," says 
Mr. Conkling — " that the outlook was very encouraging. 
He listened attentively and thanked me. * * * He 
was not very sanguine of the result. He did not express 
the opinion that he would be nominated." (Statement of 
James C. Conkling to the author in 1896.) 

After leaving Mr. Conkling's office, Mr. Lincoln had 
gone to the dry goods store of Ninian W. Edwards & 
Co., on an errand for Mrs. Lincoln. " I had started 
out," Mr. Lincoln afterward told a friend. T. W. S. Kidd, 
"and 'Jack' Smith (a member of the firm) walked to 
the door with me. As we stood there talking I heard a 
shout go up near the telegraph office. Then Jim Conk- 
ling's oldest boy came running up and told me I was 
nominated. That was the first I knew of it." " Jim 
Conkling's oldest boy," who thus " notified " Mr. Lin- 
coln, was Clinton L. Conkling, now a prominent lawyer 
of Springfield. 

Mr. Lincoln, in a few minutes, was surrounded by 
friends, who came hurrying up to congratulate him. He 
thanked them, but said he " must be going." " There is 
a little woman down on Eighth street," said he. " and I 
must go and tell her about this." 

Very soon after the Chicago convention, it became 
clear to the country that the Republicans had named their 
strongest man. The fence rails that " Dick " Oglesby 
and old John Hanks had hauled in from the Sangamon 



How Abraham Lincoln Became President. 91 

bottom and that had electrified the State convention at 
Decatur were now to make their appeal to the popular 
fancy. 

" Mr. Lincoln's romantic personal history," wrote 
Horace Greeley in the Tribune, " his eloquence as an 
orator, and his firm personal integrity, give augury of 
a successful campaign — one of the 1840 stamp." 

It proved to be far more unique and impressive than 
the " hard cider " campaign of 1840. The fence-rail 
was everywhere in evidence. It was carried aloft in 
parades ; flaming banners fluttered from it at rallies ; 
glee clubs sang its praises ; campaign clubs called them- 
selves " Rail Splitters " and " Rail Maulers " ; and 
brawny-armed men mounted on huge wagons split rails 
as the procession moved along. 

Quickly the story of Lincoln came out — the story 
which two years earlier he had declared " would interest 
no one " — the marvelous story of his meek and lowly 
birth, his struggles, his triumphs — and the world was 

amazed. 

******* 

The momentous events of the succeeding months — 
the eventful campaign of i860, with the Democracy 
divided between Douglas at the North and Breckenridge 
at the South — the election of Lincoln in November and 
the gathering storm of secession — can not be narrated 
at length in this little volume. Responsibility weighed 
heavily upon the President-elect as he prepared for his 
departure for Washington. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FAREWELL ! 

On a somber morning in February, 1861, Mr. Lincoln, 
accompanied by his family and others, took his leave for 
the national capital. Several hundred of his neighbors — 
men and women whom he had known almost a lifetime — 
gathered at the old Great Western station. Mr. Lincoln 
came out of the car and, standing on the rear platform, 
thus spoke with deep emotion : 

" My Friends : No one not in my situation can appreciate 
my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place and the kind- 
ness of these people I owe everything. Here I have lived a 
quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old 
man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I 
nowf leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with 
a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. 
Without the assistance of that Diyine Being who ever attended 
him, I can not succeed. With that assistance, I can not fail. 
Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and 
be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet 
be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers 
you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 

The train rolled slowly away to the eastward. A 
little city in a western State was sending its first citizen 
to become the greatest President of the greatest republic 
of the world. 



93 



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